


Dumbapple Pies and Secrets

by Leonawriter



Series: FF7 minifics [12]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Character Study, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 11:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15193733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: Gillian watches the two Project G boys grow up in Banora, and she can never rid herself of the guilt that comes with her part in things. She can only do what little she can.





	Dumbapple Pies and Secrets

Gillian watches the boys as they grow up - one up close and day to day, the other mostly from afar, and mostly hoping that his parents don't notice her as she does - and she can never truly rid herself of the fear that they will someday find out what they are, what Shinra made them for... her own part in things.

But she doesn't say any of this. She can't. 

The best she can do is make sure that they're treated well in Banora, and treated with as much love as she can give them, but that's also the very  _least_ she can do as well, because next to what she's done to them, that's nothing. It does nothing to repair any of it.

She worries, when Angeal comes home one day and there's a small, proud, and smart looking redhead behind him. She worries, because she wonders - what if because they know each other, they find out? What if Hojo's theories end up being correct, about Jenova's cells searching each other out?

She tells herself not to, and puts on a smile, and hides her worries away where the children cannot see them, because that is by now what she's good at, it's pretending that things are okay.

Little Genesis smiles brighter when he's around her son, she notices, compared to the times she's seen him in town before now, looking at everyone as though he were somehow apart and above everyone. 

It turns into merely the first visit of many, and she does her best to make him feel as welcome in her home as she can only hope he feels in his own. She knows that his parents are wealthy enough to support him - Shinra had made sure of that - but she also knew that they had a tendency to look upon her with thinly veiled suspicion.

She turns around, just in time to see a pair of small hands help a slice of her apple pie disappear, and she can't help smiling despite the loss, because a slice of pie is a drop in the ocean compared to what she wishes she could do for him.

The years go by, and the boys grow up, taller and stronger and eager for new experiences... to live out the daydreams and adventures they had as children. She forces herself to bite her tongue against harsh words when Angeal tells her one day that he is going to Midgar, going to become a SOLDIER, and Genesis will be going with him.

They'll become heroes, Genesis says. They'll meet Sephiroth, he says, as Angeal smiles on, both of them oblivious, and her heart breaks as she puts on a smile and brings out an apple pie.

The moment they leave, the moment she can't see the back of the truck they're on anymore, she doesn't let herself sink to the ground, doesn't let herself falter or fall, but she takes herself to the house on the hill, the house where the best apples grew, and where Genesis had grown up.

 _You know,_ she wants to the two people she finds there,  _you have to,_ _so why let him do this?_

But she doesn't. Instead, they nod, politely, at one another. Time ticks slowly by, until Genesis' mother - as far as she had known up until now, a stern and austere woman preoccupied with appearances, with dirty blonde hair that fell down her back - folded in on herself, her head falling into her hands.

"You should have been his mother," the woman says, all sharp bitterness. "I told them - back then - I told them I wouldn't have the faintest clue how to look after a child like that."

She wants to say  _yes, perhaps I should have been,_ but they have both lost their children to Shinra, and it is too cruel.

"You know they never would have allowed that," she says, and eventually Genesis' mother lifts her head, and she nods, slowly. "We tried, we did all that we could. We can't ask any more of ourselves."

They have to settle for that, and when they part ways, she hopes that things will heal, even slightly.

Angeal and Genesis spend so much time away that years go by until she sees them again. Angeal sends her letters, and that helps, helps her feel that things haven't gone so badly wrong, and he sends her photographs too, of harmless things such as plants and animals and food, and sometimes even friends.

And then, before she knows it, there is a knock on her door and instead of two little boys, she sees two grown men. Men whose eyes glow with mako, and who move with the grace of those who are far too used to fighting.

But they sit at her table, and although Genesis bristles at the mention of his parents, he laughs easily at the stories that Angeal tells, and he takes off his gloves so that when he takes a piece of the dumbapple pie that hadn't even been served yet, he can lick his fingers, eyes bright, and she can't help but smile, can't help but hope that maybe...

Just  _maybe_ this might be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I remember at one point a while back, someone suggested I write something with Gillian, and I've been having mental images of Genesis filching apple pie quite frequently of late, so... fic happened.
> 
> I've always thought there isn't enough attention on 'what were things actually like before things started going wrong?' It's one of those fics where I wish things could just stay like this and canon didn't have to happen.


End file.
